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Deidamia, HWV42

Introduction

Deidamia, Handel’s last opera, has what seems to be an original libretto by Paolo Rolli and was first performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 10 January 1741. It received only three performances. The Overture is in the French form, with a brisk and bouncy Allegro. Rolli based the story on the post-Homeric myth of the boyhood of the Greek hero Achilles. In an attempt to evade a prediction that he will die in war, the baby Achilles is disguised as a girl and sent to the island of Scyros. Lycomedes, the king of Scyros, brings him up with his real daughter Deidamia. As the children grow up, Deidamia inevitably learns Achilles’ true nature and the pair become lovers. When the Trojan War begins, the Greeks are told they cannot win without Achilles, and Ulysses undertakes to find him. The opera begins with his arrival on Scyros with other Greek rulers. Ulysses soon becomes suspicious of the boisterous character of Deidamia’s supposed sister. Eventually he tricks Achilles into revealing himself by offering him a choice of gifts. Achilles chooses a sword and armour rather than fine silks, and as he does so a trumpet sounds, calling all Greeks to the war against Troy. Achilles gladly agrees to leave Scyros and join the war. Realizing that she will never see Achilles again, Deidamia curses Ulysses for ruining her happiness. Her aria begins as a slow, accusatory lament. The voice enters at the very start, and the strings sadly echo each phrase. A second section, the actual curse, is fast, and is followed by what at first seems to be a conventional da capo repeat of the opening section. Instead, however, it proves to be a much shortened recapitulation, and a new version of the fast section unexpectedly returns to finish the aria. The role was first sung by Elisabeth du Parc, known as ‘La Francesina’, who later became the creator of the title role of Handel’s Semele.

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You have brought me misery, But with what honour to you? Suppress, you said, a faithful love.

If the waves speed you To an unfaithful heart, Then may the unstable elements Unleash a fierce gale, And as you approach your homeland May you drown, you monster.

Deidamia was Handel’s last opera, given at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and a failure: there were only three performances. It was, maybe, ahead of its time rather than out of date in a period when public enthusiasm for opera seria was on the wane. The tone of the libretto is ironic, cynical even, adroitly mixing the comic and the serious in near-Mozartian manner. The hero Achilles is in hiding on the island of Skyros, in disguise as the nymph Pyrrha, because prophecies have foretold both that he will die in Troy, and that the Greeks will not succeed without him. The king’s daughter Deidamia has seen through his female disguise and they are in love. The wily Ulysses comes to Skyros to find Achilles and pays court to both Deidamia and ‘Pyrrha’, whose skill at the hunt and unfeminine interest in weapons of war betrays his identity. Lightly treated gender confusion is indeed one of the opera’s main attractions. In the finale Achilles leaves for Troy and Deidamia is heartbroken. In her third-act aria she berates Ulysses, whose courtship she took seriously, for having ruined her life; at this late stage Handel was adapting da capo form, and instead of ABA we have ABAB; largo followed by allegro with both repeated and decorated. Deidamia’s reference to an ‘unfaithful heart’ is indeed ironic: Ulysses’s wife was the constant Penelope.